At that exact moment
I pound against the closed front door until it opens, revealing Dagny Hanssen, Tess’s best friend.
Her mouth drops and she takes a terrified step back when Marco raises his arm and points a gun at her forehead.
“Where is she?” I ask calmly. The lethal edge in my voice reveals that I’m anything but.
The amusement I felt when Tess first disappeared is long gone. Whatever patience I had is too, short lived and easily combusted by the flames of the fury raging inside me.
She’s been gone a month and with each passing day I lose more of my fucking sanity. I didn’t have much to begin with and my reserves are getting dangerously low now. I’m tormented by visions of her, seeing her where she isn’t, I’m tortured by thoughts of who she’s spending time with, and I’m plagued by dreams where I get my hands back on her curves and finally take what’s mine.
I’ve been in a state of perpetual discomfort since I last saw her, my mood pitch black and my cock angry, hard, and throbbing. Arturo brought a woman to my office last week, shoved her inside, slammed the door behind her and disappeared. I think he was hoping she’d fuck the tension out of me and I’d return to being the usual asshole he’s used to working for instead of the tyrant he’s had to deal with this past month.
When I finally lifted my gaze from the financial report I was going through and looked at her, the woman dropped her coat to the floor, revealing her stark-naked body beneath it.
Much to my disappointment, my cock hadn’t even twitched, obsessed with one person and one person only.
My lip had curled up in disgust and I’d snarled at the woman. She’d seen something in my gaze that had sent her fleeing nude from the room without even bothering to pick up her discarded coat, uncaring of her nakedness.
I’d been in a black mood to begin with because the financial reports weren’t adding up, but her appearance only exacerbated it.
I didn’t want to look at any bodies except the one that belonged to me. Even though I hadn’t seen Tess naked, yet, I’d run my hands over enough of her curves to conjure her from memory. So I’d closed my eyes and used my imagination to get myself off, fisting my cock angrily until I reached a necessary but unsatisfying finish.
What’s most frustrating is how severely I underestimated her. She’s been completely untraceable since she left. Her phone has been off, her cards unused, her work conducted via encrypted address and calls. There’s no way she’s doing this herself but I haven’t been able to track down who’s helping her.
I’ve officially reached my limit, and playing nice ends today. Tess knew who she was dealing with and what she was risking when she ran away.
She called me deranged and psychotic – she was right.
It’s time I proved it to her.
“Where is she?” I snarl. “Don’t make me ask you a third time, Dagny.”
She backs away slowly, burrowing deeper into her apartment and trapping herself with no escape. Fear twists her features even though she doesn’t seem surprised. Based on her reaction, she knows exactly who I am and why I’m here.
I follow her inside, stalking after her and forcing her to stumble further back into her living room. She bumps sightlessly against her furniture in her desperation to get away from me.
Behind me, I hear Marco close the door.
Dagny’s hands come up defensively, shaking violently. “I have no idea,” she swears. “Please, I don’t know! She didn’t tell me where she was going.”
Staring at her, I let the discomfort of the drawn-out silence keep her talking.
“I’m not lying, I have no idea. But if you shoot me, she’ll never come back,” she tries to reason.
“I disagree. If I kill you, I’m sure she won’t skip your funeral.”
Dagny swallows thickly, her eyes widening. Her arms drop and she wraps them protectively around her middle.
“That’s unfortunately a great counterargument,” she admits, gnawing at her lower lip and somehow finding reserves of strength to tap into humor when there’s a gun still trained on her. “Not one I love, obviously, but great nonetheless.” She lifts her chin and tips it at me. “She’ll hate you if you kill me.”
A sinister grin pulls at my lips, making her flinch.
“You say that like I give a fuck. Hate I can work with, absence I cannot. Tell me where she is, Dagny, otherwise Marco here will put a bullet in your brain.”
“I have no idea!”
“Marco.”
With no other order needed, Marco fires twice into the ground on either side of Dagny’s bare feet. She screams and jumps around on her tiptoes to avoid being shot.
He’s an excellent marksman. If his intent was to hit her, not scare her, he would have.
“Hey!” she shouts, eyes flaring angrily when she sees the holes in her wooden boards. Eventually, she looks up and glares vexingly at him. “I just had these floors redone. That’s Versailles parquet you’re riddling with bullet holes, you brute. They cost me an absolute fortune, and that’s without factoring in the emotional cost to my sanity, so can you please do me a favor and just shoot into the wall or TV next time?”
Marco’s hand drops to his side, a mix of annoyance and incredulity marking his features. “What is your malfunction, woman? Why aren’t you scared?”
Dagny plants her fists on her hips and glares back at him. “l’m terrified — Marco, was it? — but I don’t need to spend what’s possibly my last minutes on earth watching you torture my beloved apartment, so if you’re going to keep doing that, I’d rather you just put me out of my misery, okay? A clean shot between the eyes should do the trick.”
Irritatingly, I find myself understanding why this woman is Tess’s best friend. She’s just as much of a brave little fool as my fiancée.
Marco looks at me with a bewildered look on his face. For only the second time in his life, I think he’s actually at a loss for words.
“So… do I shoot her, jefe?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Dagny begs, hands up once more, all traces of humor gone from her face. “I—I was kidding about the whole shooting me thing. I joke when I’m nervous and, well, you have a gun,” she explains. “I really have no idea where she is, I promise. She made a point not to tell me because she knew you’d come here looking for her.”
“That was her mistake,” I answer cold-bloodedly.
There’s always this split-second before a person gets shot when realization hits.
That sudden cognizance of what’s about to happen to them becomes visible on their face, in the slackening of their features and the abject terror that takes over their gazes. It’s an innate understanding that they’re about to die, that moment where their life flashes before their eyes and regret hits as they think about all the dreams they had that they never made a reality.
I fucking love that moment, the sheer humanity of it just before a life is snuffed out forever. It’s the very definition of power. It gets my dick hard knowing the last thing people see before they simply cease to exist is me; that I was judge, jury and executioner with their lives in my hands.
That the decision was easier than deciding which mug to pour my coffee into that morning.
Unfortunately for me but luckily for Dagny, I don’t get to experience that moment today because she manages to snatch her life from the jaws of death.
“She’ll never get over losing me,” Dagny whispers, holding my gaze. “It’ll devastate her and change her forever. You’ll never get the old version of her back.”
There’s no way she thinks that’ll actually work on me. Emotion is the last thing that weighs in the balance when it comes to taking someone’s life.
And yet.
I’m about to laugh derisively when an image of Tess broken by the death of her best friend flashes through my mind. She’s sobbing, cheeks wet with tears, eyes wide and haunted.
That vision does something absolutely perplexing to me. Something that’s never happened before.
It makes me pause.
And it makes me waver.
Puta madre.
I’m faltering from making a decision I’d otherwise make in a heartbeat because I don’t want my fiancée to be sad. What the actual fuck?
Since when do I fucking care?
I can’t be defective like this in my position — my ruthlessness can’t be impaired by thoughts of how one blue-eyed woman will react, no matter who she is.
I’ll have Marco beat the weakness out of me with his fists later. Hopefully that’ll also drill some sense back into me.
Cursing at myself internally, I change the plan through angrily gritted teeth.
“Brazo,” I bark.
Marco fires. If he’s surprised by the lack of kill shot, he doesn’t show it.
The force of the bullet makes Dagny’s body jerk backwards. She flies a couple feet and hits the floor, screaming as the slug buries itself into her right arm.
Blood spurts haphazardly from the visible hole in her flesh. Silent tears stream down her face as she continues to scream, her other hand coming up to clutch the wound to staunch the bleeding.
She uses her operational arm to drag her body backwards, crawling away from my approaching form as best she can. She’s whimpering in pain, her face fractured when I crouch in front of her.
Surely she must realize the mercy she’s just been given. A non-lethal gunshot wound is a generosity she wouldn’t have received without uttering her last words.
I toss a kitchen towel at her and she catches it, staring at me with wary eyes. I continue to toy with her, hoping it’ll reignite the previous interest I had in taking her life. She blanches, losing all color in her face, when I take my gun out of the band of my trousers and press it against the open skin of her throat.
“Are you going to kill me?”
I appreciate the directness of her question.
Not many would dare.
Her muscles work beneath the cold metal as she swallows thickly. As scared as she is, there’s still a defiant look in her gaze. Grudgingly, I feel a touch of respect for her.
Ignoring her question, I say. “You might not know where Tess is, but you know someone who does, that I’m sure of.” I lift the gun slowly until it rests against her forehead. My words are low and chilling when I speak next. “You tell my fiancée that I want her back now. If she doesn’t come back to me, I’ll happily pay you a second visit and this time Marco won’t stop shooting until you look like a piece of Swiss cheese. That’s my promise to her and you. Can I trust you to deliver that message, Dagny?”
She nods tremulously, staring unflinchingly back at me. Blood oozes between her fingers and down her arm but she doesn’t pay it any attention.
“Good,” I say, rising to my feet.
Marco is already out of the apartment and I’m standing in the doorway when Dagny speaks again.
“I did warn her. I told her you wouldn’t let her go.”
Looking back at her over my shoulder, I find her standing, clutching her arm and giving me an assessing look.
I nod, my face devoid of any emotion.
“She should have listened to you.”
